


End to Start

by yutaeilbot



Series: I don't have a title for this but they're connected I swear: The series [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Crying, Familial Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kissing, M/M, but then drift apart and find each other again later, i dont know how to tag this, its one of those where like they know each other as kids, tags are a mystery honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 04:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18514108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yutaeilbot/pseuds/yutaeilbot
Summary: They didn’t get to say goodbye to each other; there was no tearful farewell, no keeping in contact.(a coffee break universe fic in which doten were childhood sweethearts who lost each other until suddenly they didn't.)[this can definitely be stand alone, you don't have to have read coffee break to know anything abt this]





	End to Start

**Author's Note:**

> hello welcome to claude cannot keep up with fics and constantly doesn't keep his own schedule or expectation! also welcome back to coffee break-verse. here we have a completely unplanned Doten. 
> 
>  
> 
> this is an entirely different facet of coffee break-verse doyoung btw. theres no sass here. a lot of crying though. we love multifaceted people

Doyoung and Ten were like sea and shore - it was unusual to find one without the other, regardless of the sometimes negative effects they had on one another. They were children, still growing into themselves and often into each other. One’s growth was often overbearing to the other, a tidal wave onto the beach that broke down shells and rocks into the miniscule grains of sand that would come to make up the entirety of the area strangers would wander as years passed.

It was a friendship of convenience, at first; the only two children in their apartment complex, bonding over music and books, hiding under the slide at the park down the block to escape the bickering of their parents, the oppressive presence of expectation. It was easy and it worked. The convenience led them to a strong friendship - a relationship of ups and downs, ins and outs, spats and apologies. Their easy friendship blossomed into more: into a kiss behind a magazine; holding hands in a darkened movie theater; whispered confessions in the darkness of Doyoung’s room, time flown past, dark eyes sparkling in the light of a streetlamp brought through the sheer curtain across the room.

As a child, neither of them called it love. They liked each other a lot, they wanted to spend their time together, they had sweaty palms and nervous butterflies in their stomachs, but love was something adults did. So, they were just friends who liked each other a lot.

And then Ten left. They didn’t get to say goodbye to each other; there was no tearful farewell, no keeping in contact. Ten didn’t see Doyoung cry, confused and hurt after losing his best friend with seemingly no explanation. Doyoung didn’t see Ten’s fights, the screaming matches with disapproving parents, the slap reddened cheeks and eyes full of betrayal.

In the long term, Ten was glad Doyoung didn’t know the looks of disgust he got from his parents, was glad Doyoung didn’t know his parents forced the move after spotting a poorly hidden kiss. Early on Ten decided he’d rather Doyoung be confused and sad than have him know he was part of why the move happened. There’s an awful kind of guilt in knowing your feelings and the carelessness of childhood made trouble for someone you held dear.

But that’s how Doyoung and Ten - sea and shore - lost one another, grew separately, but never forgot.

* * *

Doyoung decided to study business in college his final year of high school. He and his family moved closer to the city following his brother’s theatre acting debut, and Doyoung found the hustle and bustle of city life was quite to his liking. That and a short internship at one of the city’s larger electronics companies cemented the decision of his major. He liked it. It wasn’t long before he found himself deeply interested in the business world, even before attending university, and his excitement for the adventure of college mounted as his freshman year approached.

He met Yuta that year - a sophomore exchange student who seemed to spend more class time staring out the window and people watching than investing himself in management theories and typical production schedules. Regardless of the elder’s seeming disinterest, they became friends and their friendship, though sometimes strange, was nice for Doyoung. Honestly, he hadn’t had a close friend in years; high school was spent mostly with vague acquaintances, especially after moving. He greatly appreciated the friendship, but never expected it to throw him for a loop when Yuta introduced him to his friends and brought him face-to-face once again with Ten.

Ten was easy to read, just like he had been as a child, and Doyoung’s interior mirrored the momentarily shocked expression Ten showed upon recognizing who Yuta was introducing. Doyoung tried to pretend it didn’t bother him; he played calm and pleasant even though Ten’s presence had his heart pounding sporadically in his chest.

Yuta and Doyoung moved in together the next year after Yuta, mere weeks before fall semester, called Doyoung nearly hysterical, half-crying half-laughing about how he made a split-second decision to return to the city and stay. Doyoung didn’t mind living with Yuta, but he had tried really hard to avoid Ten after that first… reunion. He didn’t want to deal with the onslaught on emotions that would inevitably bulldoze over him if he spent more time with Ten. Even the single meeting brought back bad dreams Doyoung had finally abandoned in middle school, dreams of loneliness and anxiety, confusion and sadness. Getting close to Ten again felt like it would only become the precursor to those dreams, and Doyoung wanted nothing more than to keep that from happening.

The avoidance didn’t last as long as he’d like. Ten became a regular character in Doyoung’s life after moving in with Yuta, and he tried his damnedest to try to get Doyoung to speak to him, or even sit in the same room with him for longer than ten minutes when the others had stepped away. It only takes two months of Ten’s persistence for Doyoung to cave in and let Ten talk to him.

“I’m sorry,” were the first words Ten said that night, standing, rain-soaked in the apartment doorway after having ran there at 8 pm. Doyoung couldn’t hide his surprise then, or his confusion, and he ushered Ten into the apartment and gave him dry clothes to wear, a warm drink to heat his inevitably frozen insides.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” the shorter admitted, sitting cross legged on Doyoung’s bed, in Doyoung’s sweats and t-shirt, holding Doyoung’s favorite mug full of Doyoung’s favorite tea. “I don’t know what possessed me to come here tonight, though. I’m sorry.”

Doyoung sat at his desk, at a respectable distance from his bed, eyes darting around the room almost as if he was looking for a way to escape. Having Ten right there, so close after so many years, almost drowning in the shirt that was too big even on Doyoung’s broad frame… there was tension in the air, a nervousness Doyoung couldn’t shake, and it was obvious on his face.

“I don’t know where to start.” Ten took a slow drink of the steaming tea, smiling to himself at the warmth that flooded through him. It was nice; a familiar warmth that felt distinctly like Doyoung, the other’s very essence seeming to be represented in the subtle flavor of the tea to Ten. “I missed you a lot.”

Ten laughed into the silence, shaking his head at himself. “I never would have thought we’d meet again here. I never imagined you were the one friend Yuta wanted to introduce us to. When you walked in the door that day, I thought I was dreaming. And you acted so casually even though I felt like I would burst.”

“I did, too,” Doyoung interjected softly, staring down at his floor. “I sat across from you but just knowing you were right there made my heart beat so fast. I hated it.”

A moment of silence passed between them.

“Why?” They made eye contact for the first time since Ten arrived that night when the word slipped from Doyoung’s lips. “What did I do?”

“It wasn’t you,” Ten was quick to insist. His hands tightened around the mug, fueled by his own anxieties, and he sat it on Doyoung’s bedside table after a moment. “You didn’t do anything.”

Ten took a moment to collect himself, breathing deeply before speaking again. “Do you remember the January of the year we turned twelve? We would go to the playground even though our parents said we shouldn’t because it was supposed to snow, and one day the snow started when we were walking home.”

Doyoung did remember. His mind instantly filled with the image of Ten on the swing, button-nose red in the winter air, eyes turned to crescents by his bright smile. The memory of the cold, the way Ten’s hand was so warm in his on the way home.

“I kissed you in front of the apartment building,” Ten said, filling in the memory before Doyoung’s brain did. “In the snow. You looked so cute with the snowflakes caught on your eyelashes. Your cheeks were red but I didn’t know if it was because I kissed you or because of the wind.”

Doyoung didn’t have the courage to tell him it was from the kiss.

“My parents saw.” Ten laughed again, but it was raw, thick with sadness, and Doyoung saw him blink away tears. “They were so… angry. I had a bruise on my face for a week - that week I told you my mom got sick so I was helping out around the house and I couldn’t come play. We fought a lot after that. Really frequently until I was 18 and I could leave. When I told them I was moving out, they told me if I moved out, I could never come back.”

“Ten…”

“I told them I didn’t want to come back anyway.”

Doyoung was quick to cross the distance between the desk and the bed then. He took Ten’s cheeks in his hands, brushing his thumbs over Ten’s cheekbones and wiping away the tears that started falling. He didn’t realize he had started crying too until Ten choked out another laugh and reached up to wipe his tears as well.

“All this time…” Doyoung’s voice caught in his throat.

“I’m sorry.”

They stayed like that for a moment until Doyoung spoke again. “Do you… I--”

“I never stopped being in love with you,” the other interrupted, voice soft. “But I could never bring myself to contact you. I just knew you hated me. Why wouldn’t you?”

“I missed you,” was all Doyoung could say back.

“Can I kiss you?”

“You didn’t ask back then, you know.”

“We aren’t eleven anymore, Doyoung.”

It felt like words lost all meaning in that moment. The only thing Doyoung could think to do in response was to press kisses all over Ten’s face - his forehead, his cheeks, his eyelids and nose, his lips.

At eleven, kissing your best friend was exciting; it was something you weren’t supposed to do, especially if you were both boys. At 20-something, they weren’t kissing their best friends anymore. They were practically strangers now, the sea and shore finding each other once again as a lake and a mountain, two completely different entities regardless of their familiar foundations.

In the span of one night, things in their life flipped. There was no more avoiding it, no more worries. Doyoung started having those dreams regularly again, the lonely ones, the ones where Ten is there and then gone with no explanation, the ones that woke him with tears in his eyes. He never told anyone about any of them, just hoped they’d pass with time, and they did.

Ten and Doyoung started… rebuilding, for lack of a better word. It wasn’t the same - they knew it would never be - but the entirely new relationship they built was slow, meaningful. They spent a lot of time reconnecting as friends. Of course, they still longed for one another, and nothing stopped them from sharing kisses where they hoped no one saw, nothing stopped Ten from showing up at 10 with take out and a demand for attention, nothing stopped the way they looked at each other.

They don’t openly become an item for about eight months. It was a slow process, yeah, but they didn’t want to rush it because of their childhood. The love was there - it never left - but it would be pointless to them to build a relationship based solely on that after drifting so far apart. After revealing their relationship to those who mattered (Yuta, specifically), they fell into an almost familiar rhythm with one another. Happy smiles and tender kisses fell naturally into place among the course work and rehearsal, the expectations fell away as they grew into each other once more, no longer sea and shore, but slotting perfectly together nonetheless.  

**Author's Note:**

> for the record they told yuta they were a thing before they told anyone they had known each other and so yuta's first response is "dude i didnt introduce you to my friends so you could date them" and his later response is "i definitely planned all of this specifically to bring you together youre welcome"
> 
> im not 100% happy with this but whatever its here i wrote it it has some redeeming qualities
> 
> talk to me on twit @yutaeilbot uwu


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